When you’re a physician associate (PA) or nurse practitioner (NP) on the front lines of patient care, you see every day all the ways the system falls short. If you’re like Kari Cao, PA-C, MHS, NFC, you might just be ready to fix it.
Cao transformed her frustration into a dream with the persistence to follow it through. Her passion for improving women’s healthcare led to the startup, RenewRx, a patient care platform that partners with OB/GYNs to support moms with gestational diabetes. She shares her story and advice on what it takes for a clinician to become a founder.
The problem: Start with the frustration you can’t let go
Before COVID, Cao had her dream job as a family medicine practitioner at a Colorado FQHC, managing a panel of 1,200 patients. Still, she found the 15-minute visits weren’t enough to help patients truly understand their health or build a plan to succeed.
That limitation became glaringly obvious during home visits, where she saw real-world obstacles, such as limited transportation, insufficient grocery access and even a lack of sidewalks.
It was one thing to label a patient as “noncompliant” in the office. The reality was a complicated system working against them. “I realized I only saw a snapshot of a patient in an exam room and never truly understood all the elements that kept them from succeeding,” she says.
Cao’s start-up advice: Rather than get frustrated by a challenge in the system, look for the root cause.
Then ask: What’s really missing?
The gap between medical recommendations and implementation became Cao’s obsession. But it wasn’t until she was furloughed during COVID that she made a move that helped her do something about it. She attended culinary school to train as a chef with a focus on nutrition. “I’ve always seen food as medicine and never felt confident enough in my nutritional training to explain it to patients, as most medical providers get less than 10 hrs during our training. I got three,” she says.
By the time Cao graduated, she was determined to find a way to be a lifeline for medical providers to prescribe nutrition even without a deep nutrition background. A conversation about her sister’s gestational diabetes diagnosis became a turning point.
Cao’s start-up advice: Once you know the root cause of a problem, try to imagine ways to improve it or work around it.
The Solution: Find an idea that fits into real-world care
Cao still dreams of fixing the whole system, but her sister’s story led her to start with improving gestational diabetes care. She launched RenewRx as a fully reimbursable care platform for gestational diabetes, combining:
- A patient app for real-time support and behavior change
- A provider dashboard for biometric tracking, care collaboration and documentation
- A team of care management coaches, certified in nutrition, collaborate with medical providers to support patients between visits
Through the app, RenewRX offers lifestyle and nutritional support that complements the existing medical care journey. Patients feel more in control of their health. Providers can deliver better wraparound care and even get new monthly revenue through insurance reimbursements.
The result is that everyone wins.
“We’re bringing in up to $1,000 per patient per month of brand new revenue. Otherwise, practices are floating all the prenatal care costs until delivery,” she says.
Cao’s start-up advice: Start by testing to solve a small problem area before trying to fix the whole system.
A start-up roadmap for PAs and NPs with a vision
Cao offers practical advice for clinicians who want to build their own solution:
- Validate your idea
Do your due diligence to determine if solutions exist for the problem you identify. Ask friends, family, colleagues and experts if your idea already exists. If yes, join that effort. If not, talk to providers and patients. Cao recommends asking, “If you had a magic wand, what would the perfect solution be?”
- Start inside the system
Before launching something on your own, try piloting it within your practice. Join committees. Lead a project. Prove the need.
- Join another startup first
Don’t start from scratch to build a company when you’ve never been a business owner. There are lots of opportunities to volunteer as an advisor for startups or to work part-time at an early-stage company. Learn how startups work, such as how to think about fundraising, liability, compliance, marketing and product development.
- Assemble advisors
Every startup needs advisors. Cao credits much of the progress she’s made with RenewRx to experts who gave time, knowledge, and mentorship, especially before she could afford to pay them.
- Understand the funding landscape
Cao invested over $400K of her own funds before raising $1.25 million. RenewRX is starting another fundraising round in August. There’s a long road paved with startups that ran out of funding –– especially female-led startups –– so do your research.
- Be patient
A lot of startup life is a slog. Cao hasn’t taken a paycheck in four years. Today, RenewRx is recognized as part of the top 4% of startup Med Tech companies in the world and was selected for the MedTech Innovator company out of nearly 1500 companies.
For Cao, the long road to building a startup that’s already proving to fill a significant healthcare gap has been worthwhile. “Sometimes the knock is an opportunity, and sometimes it knocks you over. What shapes your future is how you respond to those knocks because you’ll never know what’s behind the door unless you open it and walk through,” she says.
